THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508310431
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Teachers thought him adorable: his face a bowl full of freckles, his hair strawberry flaxen.
But Nicholas DuFord just didn't seem to go for it the way other kindergartners and first graders did. They eagerly repeated stories the teacher had told, raising pudgy hands to answer word rhymes. He stayed silent and to himself.
At Magruder Primary, teachers heard that silence: Nicholas' language skills ranked in the bottom 20 percent of the first-grade class. He was sent to the Reading Recovery program. To pay for it, Newport News schools use federal dollars designated for at-risk students.
Now, in its budget-balancing frenzy, Congress has targeted that money, known as Title I funding, for major cuts in the 1996-97 fiscal year. The House has voted to cut $1.1 billion nationally. That means Newport News would lose about $800,000, Norfolk about $1.3 million, Portsmouth $700,000 and Virginia Beach $600,000. Soon the Senate will vote.
Newport News Superintendent Eric J. Smith has mobilized a statewide coalition of school systems. He urges parents of students who have benefited from Title I programs to write or call their senator. Now.
Gayle DuFord is writing.
She had been worried about her boy.
His was a loving two-parent home. The family's craft-making business was doing OK. Their breezy, working-class neighborhood that ends at the Chesapeake Bay had problems with drugs some years ago. The church and other community efforts cleared things up. None of it affected Nicholas.
But managing kindergarten had been difficult. He went out the door some days with his head down.
It was teacher Linda Husbands who broke Nicholas' silence.
Every day for six months, Husbands spent a half-hour with him. At 12:30 p.m., she promptly fetched him from class.
``Nope,'' the boy says. She never missed a day.
``We played games. I wrote on the chalk board. She taught me how to spell words,'' Nicholas remembers, blue-green eyes lighting up and small frame shuddering like a pinball machine.
He scored.
Soon Gayle DuFord's boy was snap-happy to go to school each day.
And she anxiously awaited his homecoming. The school bus lurched to a stop near their house on Maple Avenue. Seconds later, Nicholas bounded in the door, ready to recite his reading lesson to her like a love poem: ``Three Little Pigs,'' ``My Back Yard,'' ``The Witch's Haircut.''
He learned to check books out of the school library and to return them on time. He took other careful steps out on the ice of independence. Dad, younger sister Phoebe and older sister Kimberly noticed.
``He changed from a shy little child with all these ideas in his mind to a person who could handle the world around him,'' said Gayle DuFord.
By second grade, Nicholas was downright outgoing. He even got in trouble for talking in class.
``It was that individual attention that he needed,'' DuFord is convinced.
``Frankly, I think every kid should have a half-hour every day with someone who cares about you. That makes more difference than seven hours in the classroom. It tears me up to think other kids who need this might not be able to get it.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Nicholas DuFord changed ``to a person who could handle the world
around him.''
by CNB